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Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown has notched up the highest rate increase ever since the formation of the Super City in 2010.
Brown’s first budget has led to an overall rate rise of 11 per cent and 7.7 per cent for households when inflation has been running at about 7 percent. For the average household, this year’s rates bill will rise from $3306 to $3560.
Brown went out with lower rates and spending cuts in his first budget proposal last December, but couldn’t convince the public and council colleagues of his plans and had to settle for higher rates.
Figures provided to the Herald by the council show Brown’s overall rate increase of 11 per cent exceeds the rate rises of his former peers, Len Brown and Phil Goff, who kept overall increases between 2.4 per cent and 5 per cent in the first full 12 years of the Super City.
Former Auckland mayor Phil Goff kept overall rate rises at between 2.4 per cent and 5 per cent. Photo / Dean Purcell
Only once, in 2015, did household rate rises come close to this year’s rise of 7.7 per cent, when they rose 7.3 per cent under Len Brown.
The 7.3 per cent figure came about with the introduction of a new targeted rate for transport, new valuations, and the final step merging the rating systems of the former eight councils into a single system.
Over the 12 full financial years of the Super City, general rates have risen by about 56 per cent, compared to a 35 per cent rise in inflation. The inflation figures for last year and this year are forecasts.
Brown expressed disappointment at the biggest rates increase under Auckland Council, saying he “compromised and compromised” on his first budget and it was the best result he could achieve from 21 votes around the table.
He said this year’s budget was the first time rates have been below inflation, but when it was pointed out the latest inflation figure is 6.7 per cent - lower than the overall 11 per cent and 7.7 per household figures - he said: “If you believe that, you believe anything.”
The history of this year’s rate rises goes back to last December, when Brown pencilled in a 7 per cent rate rise and 4.66 per cent for households in his first mayoral budget proposal, which centred on selling the council’s full shareholding in Auckland Airport and contained deep cuts to community services and the arts.
A record number of submissions on the proposed budget led the mayor to soften the cuts, and when it came to making final decisions last month, Brown was unable to get the numbers to sell all of the shares and had to settle for a partial sale and higher rates to address a $325 million budget hole.
What’s more, there’s another scary outlook for rates next year, with officers giving a “very preliminary” warning of a 13 per cent rise for households, taking average household bills to $4000.
Brown said next year’s budget will focus on ensuring household bills are affordable, saying he had no intention of proposing double-digit rate increases.
Taxpayers’ Union executive director Jordan Williams said Brown stood on a platform of keeping rates under inflation and hasn’t delivered.
He said the union issued a paper before the budget that showed rates could be held under inflation as long as you tackled the things the officials did not want to be tackled, such as the size of the back office.
“As we have seen yet again when the pressure comes on politicians, the officials put frontline services as the first to be cut when they should be the last,” Williams said.
He took another swipe at Brown for increasing the burden on businesses when the economy is coming under pressure, saying it has been left-wing mayors who have adopted a strategy of reducing business rates. Brown’s budget has paused the strategy this year.
The Auckland Ratepayers' Alliance applauded Wayne Brown on the campaign trail to keep rate increases below inflation. Photo / ARA
In an ironic twist, a member of Brown’s media team, Josh Van Veen, is the former spokesman for the Taxpayers’ Union’s local affiliate, the Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance, which vigorously campaigned for low rates at last year’s local body elections and praised Brown for a promise to keep rates under inflation.
During the campaign, Van Veen criticised Goff and his council for being “tone deaf to the unfairness of big rate rises”. Goff’s biggest overall rate rise was 5 per cent and 6.1 per cent for households.
In another media release, Van Veen said if Wayne Brown can keep rates below inflation, “he will be the greatest mayor Auckland has ever had”.
When the Herald sought comment from Van Veen, the now-ratepayer-funded bureaucrat said it would be inappropriate to comment on previous statements as spokesman for the Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance.
Greg Sayers, one of the most fiscally dry councillors who regularly voted against budgets during Goff’s six years as mayor, voted for Brown’s rate rises.
“I was profoundly disappointed when Mayor Wayne Brown’s original proposal for average rates hike of 4.66 per cent had to be compromised because he could not gain the political support he needed to rein in [the] council’s wasteful spending,” he said.
Sayers continues to support Brown, saying he will continue to work hard to fix Auckland.
Bernard Orsman is an Auckland-based reporter who has been covering local government and transport since 1998. He joined the Herald in 1990 and worked in the parliamentary press gallery for six years.
